Chocolate Mud Cake

Yesterday afternoon I decided that Marc and I would need something nice for supper, for after the kids had gone to bed.  What better than a chocolate mud cake then?  One of my all time favourite web sites, Exclusively Food have a super easy recipe for Chocolate Mud Cake with Chocolate Ganache Icing on their web site, so I thought I would give it a try.  Everything I have ever attempted out of their extensive repertoire has worked perfectly, so I was pretty sure this cake of theirs would follow suit.

As always, the recipe was easy to follow with pictures throughout the instructions and some great comments by both the authors of the blog and their readers/testers.

The recipe calls for buttermilk, which I didn't have, so I substituted this with 1 tablespoon vinegar plus enough milk to make 1 cup.  But please keep in mind that you only need 1/2 cup of buttermilk for the recipe.  I did forget this, and had poured almost all of the cup of milk into my egg/oil/vanilla mix before realising my error!

Because the cake took so long to cook, and I needed to feed the three boys dinner, the cake was put aside for the night (probably a good thing) before getting ganached today!

And here is my end result.  I'm pretty impressed with it - even though I thought I had stuffed it up!  It has great texture and flavour and is not over chocolatey (yes, that is a word in my vocabulary!), but chocolatey enough to not need to go back for a second slice (although I'm sure you could twist my arm!!).  My two taste-testers were very happy with this one!

 

Chocolate Decadence

Here's something very naughty, but very yummy that you could give a try for Valentine's Day :)

INGREDIENTS
6 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
5 tablespoons butter, room temperature
2 eggs, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).
Butter six ramekins or custard cups. Melt chocolate and butter slowly: You can do this in a double boiler, over, not in, simmering water, or in microwave, stirring to prevent scorching. Stir until completely smooth.

In a medium bowl, beat eggs with electric mixer until frothy, about 5 to 6 minutes. Stir vanilla and salt gently into beaten eggs. Fold half of egg mixture into chocolate mixture, mix well. Then fold remainder of egg mixture into chocolate mixture. Pour chocolate and egg mixture into prepared ramekins.

Line a roasting pan with a damp kitchen towel. Place ramekins on towel, inside roasting pan. Butter a piece of foil big enough to cover entire pan, and cover the ramekins, buttered side down. Place roasting pan on oven rack. Fill roasting pan with boiling water to reach halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bake 5 minutes, then remove foil and bake 10 minutes more. Remove ramekins from water carefully.

Let cool on wire rack for at least 3 hours. Cakes will firm up as they cool.

Serve in the ramekins and garnish with whipped cream, berries (frozen work really well if that's all you can get) and for that restaurant look, a shake of icing sugar for good measure, and serve.

Refrigerate unused portions - these left overs taste really good even a few days after!